In the Shadow of the Valley Summary
Bobi Conn

In the Shadow of the Valley Overview

Bobi Conn's memoir, In the Shadow of the Valley, describes her brutal childhood at the hands of a drug-addicted father and a mother incapable of standing up for herself or her children. Bobi was born in a “holler” in a rural area of Kentucky. Even though she worked to leave behind the cycles of drug abuse, violence, and poverty she had experienced in the holler, she recounts her fondness for that land. While struggling to get past the negative aspects of her childhood, she earned college degrees and had two children whom she loved and whom she taught to love others. The book's main themes are poverty's positive and negative effects, self-identity, women's roles, and domestic violence.